


I Can Burn the World

by ashesandhoney



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 15:51:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3698072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a rewrite of the "Fierce Midnight" scene in Clockwork Prince where Tessa stops Jem from destroying his violin and then they have a rather physical kissing scene. </p><p>What if it had been Will - emotional and kind of high - who had shown up at his door that night?</p><p>The answer in this case is also "rather physical kissing scene"</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can Burn the World

Will showed up at his door still too stoned to stand upright without leaning against something. Jem had hit him in the courtyard and the purple bruise on his cheekbone was like a harsh reminder of everything that was wrong in that moment. Jem gathered the violin he had been ripping music out of a moment before into one hand and crossed the room. HE shoved Will in the chest so he fell back out of the doorway and away from the door frame he had leaned on to keep himself upright.

Will staggered and then swore and pushed his way into the room. Jem let him come. He had planned to slam the door shut but instead Will did. He slammed it behind himself and crossed to where Jem stood. Jem held up the bow and pointed it at Will’s chest. He was trying to be intimidating and Jem wasn’t prepared to put up with it.

“You bastard,” Jem said and there wasn’t as much anger in the words as he felt because every word he said was tempered. He hadn’t realized how tempered until this moment. He felt it but he never said it. Everything he felt got buried down beneath his better nature and tonight Will had stripped that better nature down to a thin veneer over all the anger.

“You don’t get to determine what pain I am allowed to feel,” Will said.

“Fine, go kill yourself then. It is obvious you don’t care,” Jem said.

“And you do?” Will asked.

“I die regardless of what I do. You have your entire life ahead of you and you are prepared to throw it away in taverns and gambling dens and into the hands of drugs you probably can’t even name,” Jem said.

“I don’t,” Will said and Jem turned to walk away from him. Of course he didn’t know what he had taken. He was an idiot. Every day, Jem imagined little flashes of a good and right underneath the things that Will did but that was what it was. Imagination. His heart hurt. Years of love and care and effort and Will wasn’t worth an inch of it. He felt he’d been lied to, betrayed but really all he had been was blind. Will never hid behind his better nature and Jem had still imagined he had one.

“You bastard,” Jem said again and then he turned and flung the bow of his violin at the wall. Will grabbed his arm before he could do the same with the instrument itself.

“What are you doing?” Will growled.

“What does it matter?” Jem asked. “What would someone like you even care?”

“I care too much, I thought it might be easier to care less,” Will said still holding Jem by the wrist, “You can’t destroy this. This is a piece of you.”

Jem started to pull away but Will was holding tight and Jem wasn’t stronger than he was. His hand was warm, almost feverish through the cloth of the shirt Jem wore. Will pulled him in and gently wrestled the instrument from his fingers. Jem let himself lose the little battle. He watched Will set the violin on the table with shaky fingers. When Will looked up at him and his eyes were bloodshot and unfocused.

“I should hit you again,” Jem said.

“It wouldn’t help,” Will said and his fingers were still so tight on Jem’s arm that they almost hurt.

“Everyone loves you,” Jem said, “Even she loves you. You treat her like an bug buzzing around your ear and she loves you. You treat yourself like a thing made of rubbish. She is better than that. They are better than that. And you, most of all, you are better than that. I always believed you were better than that.”

“I’m not,” Will said crumpling down.

Angry again, Jem tried to pull his arm away but Will wouldn’t let go. Jem pulled and then in a fit of anger pushed. He pushed at Will until he was able to back him up so his shoulders hit the door. They were still locked together by Will’s unflinching grip. Jem struggled and Will clamped down harder. Jem was as high as he was but his drug left his mind clearer.

“You are all I have, James, I can burn the world. I can destroy everything else but not you. Never you,” he said and his voice got honest and sad and small as he spoke. A scared boy not an angry man. “I am not better. You are better. You make me just a little better to be near you.”

Will pulled him in a little closer and Jem was so surprised by the change in demeanor that he didn’t argue it. Will talked into the side of his face as he continued, “She doesn’t love me. She’ll never love me. No one can. And all I want…” He stopped then and Jem’s anger broke and he reached up to pull Will into a hug.

“I would never forgive you for throwing your life away,” Jem whispered.

“My life is already gone,” Will said into his shoulder. He finally released Jem’s wrist and returned the hug.

That was Will was bigger than he was should not have been surprising but when Will leaned in to him instead of the wall to stay upright, Jem stumbled backwards and they half caught each other as they tried to keep from falling. In the middle of the room now, Will’s mood swung around and he was clinging to Jem and laughing.

Jem wanted to hold onto his anger. He wanted to tell Will all the reasons that he was stupid and selfish and make him promise to improve but instead he half smiled in exasperation as Will held him a little tighter. His arm was locked around Jem’s waist now with the same unbreakable grip he had had on his wrist.

Clinging.

Will was clinging and he didn’t seem like the type of person who would. Clinging and laughing but the laugh wasn’t happy. It was hysterical. It was the kind of laugh that really should have been tears if Will wasn’t teetering on the brink of being too high to function. He smelled like the drug den and it churned Jem’s stomach a little because he knew that he always smelled like a drug den and he tried to imagine anyone willingly getting close enough to him to tell.

It was that twist of disgust that caused Jem’s anger to break. He stroked Will’s back like he was a crying child instead of a broken man. What did it take to put yourself in a place like that willingly? Why had he left his family? What was it about them that pushed him to this edge where he threw his sanity and his health around like they were playthings?

Will tried to stand up straight, his laughter faded but the manic energy didn’t. For a moment he was stable then his balance went and Jem couldn’t counter it when he was already so close and they both went down. Jem landed on the floor and Will landed on top of him, the air was forced out of Jem’s lungs with enough force that he couldn’t pull it back in for what felt like a very long time.

“Get off,” Jem said when he managed to pull in enough air to speak.

Will was over him and his eyes found Jem’s. Bloodshot but no longer unfocused. They were alert and such a deep blue that Jem didn’t protest for a moment. Will was warm and heavy seemed to take up more space when he was this close. Jem couldn’t quite breathe around the weight on his chest but when Will lifted his hand to touch Jem’s face he forgot about that.

“Will?” he said.

He had been planning on rolling Will off him and then perhaps giving him another bruise to match the one on his cheek but the expression on Will’s face stopped him. He had a knee up to give himself the leverage to push him sideways and when he froze he found himself with Will between his legs. It must have happened before during training exercises but it had never felt like this. Will leaned down into him, not just lying over him but pressing down and Jem’s next breath wasn’t shaky because of the weight on his chest.

“You make me better,” Will said and Jem shook his head but he wasn’t sure what he was trying to say any more. He turned Will’s wild night sky eyes back towards him and found his mouth suddenly too close. Will pressed into him and it wasn’t a kiss. It was just lips against lips.

Jem made it a kiss. He was so close and he was so warm and he kept cuddling in tighter. Jem lifted his chin so he could press his lips squarely against Will’s. For a moment he thought it was a mistake but then Will’s mouth opened and he kissed back. It was hesitant, glancing, Jem felt it in the pit of his stomach and down to his toes.

He freed the arm that had gotten pinned against the floor and ran it up into Will’s hair to pull him down. Jem kissed him again, a mimic of Will’s glancing little kisses but harder. Their bodies were close enough that Jem could feel Will’s breath stutter and his stomach muscles tighten. Will’s arm somehow managed to make it around his waist and pulled him in even tighter.

Jem traced the line of Will’s spine down from his neck to his waist and pulled his lower lip into his mouth to run his tongue over it. Yin fen always made him feel just a little feverish and Will’s hand on his neck and his tongue sliding in to answer what Jem had started was pushing that feverish feeling into a blaze. Jem’s body was the wrong size for his prickling skin and the world had shrunk down to Will. Only Will.

His hand found the edge of Will’s shirt and pulled it up so that he could slide his hand underneath and trace the shape of Will’s back without clothing in the way. He was distracted from the kiss by the feeling of Will’s skin under his hand. Damp and hot and smooth as silk but for the odd ridges of scar. Jem knew them all to see them and he let Will’s hair go to slide his other hand up under Will’s shirt and try and find them by touch.

Will made a gentle contented sound and pulled his shirt up over his head without bothering with the buttons. He got himself tangled in it and they both stopped to laugh, truly laugh. It stopped when Jem’s hands started tracing up the front of Will’s body and Will leaned into him to press his mouth to Jem’s neck. It was a sensation he’d never considered before and it made his eyes fall shut and his head roll back.

They were sitting for a brief moment before Will was pushing against him again, pushing him back without breaking the line of kisses down his throat and over his hammering pulse. He readjusted his knees so when he pulled Will in, he was there pressing into him again. Jem sighed and he was smiling when he pulled Will’s face around for a kiss. Will cracked a smile each time he did something demanding but never refused him.

Not ready to be laid down again, Jem braced himself with one hand against the floor and the other over Will’s bare shoulders. He kissed a line down Will’s throat just to see what it was like to be the one to do the kissing. Just to see if Will would melt into it the way his own body had. Jem followed his collar bone out to his shoulder and then back again. Will tasted just a little of salt and so Jem ran his tongue over the hollow at the bottom of Will’s neck.

Will’s reaction to that was stronger than he was expecting. He pulled Jem in closer and reached out a hand to steady himself on the nearest piece of furniture. He grabbed the edge of the beside table and tried to use it to pull them both up into an easier sitting position.

Instead he nearly pulled the table over and Jem’s little box crashed to the floor spreading silver powder across the wood. They both stopped and looked at it. Will’s hand was still fisted in Jem’s shirt and Jem’s mouth was still open though he’d pulled back from what he had been doing to Will’s neck.

Neither of them were sober.

Jem’s head cleared. Drugs and anxiety and anger spilled over into something impossible. That was what this was. He looked at Will who knelt between his spread legs, shirtless and confused. His skin ached and as much as Will’s touch had soothed it, it was a result of the drug, nothing more. He looked up at Will and Will’s eyes were still deep and dark and hazy. Maybe it was something more than the drug but he pushed that thought away.

“I think you should go,” Jem said gently.

Will nodded and started to back away but then he leaned back in and kissed Jem again. A softer, gentler kiss, this one felt different from the heated confusion and neediness of what had come before. Then he got up, still barely steady on his feet, and let himself out of the room.

Jem stared down at the cascade of silver across the oak floor and cursed every grain of it before he started to clean it up. 


End file.
